Liberal Tolerance of the Day

Lefties claim to revere tolerance. Except for someone with whom they disagree. Or ideas they oppose. To progressives in Berkeley, California, John Yoo embodies both.

Yoo is a lawyer: he clerked for Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and is now a law professor at Berkeley. But from 2001 to 2003, Yoo was Deputy Assistant Attorney General, at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. And in that role, Yoo authored some of the so-called "torture memos" (others here), including legal opinions on the scope of permissible interrogation of Git'mo detainees.

Lefties reject Yoo's reasoning and conclusions. So some are showing their tolerance by publishing his address and stalking him. And they're being encouraged by a May 28th article in the Berkeley Daily Planet:

Neighborhood Alert: Berkeley Home to Possible War Criminal . . .

Last week the Grizzly Peak neighbors of John Yoo received a "Neighborhood Alert" regarding Professor Yoo, in the form of a flyer letting them know he lives among them and providing information about his crimes, namely providing unethical and shoddy legal advice and cover to Bybee, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. . .

Unlike a sexual predator or burglar, Mr. Yoo is a criminal whom the police are not likely to point out to Berkeley citizens, though his crimes are horrific. Why am I calling him a criminal when he hasn’t (yet) been prosecuted? . .

I question the acceptability of sheltering a war criminal in Berkeley. I don’t feel safe living in the vicinity of someone who believes torture is legal. . .

[T]here is a growing group of Berkeley citizens who are standing in witness in front of Yoo’s house on a weekly basis, starting this Sunday, May 31, at 2 p.m. Join this group on Grizzly Peak for an hour or so. If there’s any justice in this world John Yoo is going to have problems living a normal life now, unless he apologizes to us all.

Zombie posted some pics of the first protest, including trespassing to write graffiti on Yoo's driveway.

The Daily Planet article's author, law firm librarian Cynthia Papermaster, is an activist in Code Pink and the now-moot National Impeachment Network. She calls herself "a Pacifist. I don't believe in killing as a way to solve conflict." Apparently, however, harassment and the presumption of guilt are ok.

As I've observed, "Tolerance is a lighter yoke when one excludes adversaries from the start--and tolerate only those with whom one already agrees." Progressives in Berkeley promote firing and banishment. That's too wimpy for Berkeley pacifists--they've "moved-on" to menace.

Next up--blaming the position taken in an Obama Administration legal brief on the religion of one Department of Justice lawyer; and a San Francisco judge sets his sights on Yoo.

Program Notes

Being busier at work, NOfP is cutting back normally to two postings a day--at midnight and noon--though look for Bob from LA some days in the 3pm slot.

When is a Joke an Attack....?

Democrats, late night talk shows, and especially Saturday Night Live use humor to belittle political targets. When a joke is used for political purposes, it is no longer just a joke. The Democrats are masters of the ad hominem attack. Their purpose is not to improve ratings, although it does do that, it is to further a liberal agenda. Dave Letterman is just the current shooting star (in the so-called main stream media) to take a pot shot at a conservative target. Yes, I agree he ought to be fired. He won't be fired though, because he only made fun of a white person.

While today the ad hominem attack is de riguer, democrats have long sought power by any means necessary. For examples we need only turn to LBJ and FDR. The outstanding book by Robert Caro, 'Means of Ascent' tells the story how LBJ stole a senate seat in a rigged election. FDR and the New Deal were ruled unconstitutional. The reason dems must resort to these tactics is they fail so miserably at debating issues of the day. Not that they are bad debaters, but they just cannot make any sense.

The current craze is to destroy political opponents by any means necessary, especially charismatic and attractive ones. Sarah Palin in Liberal's clothing would be deified by the press a la Obama, instead of vilified. Review the coarse SNL portrayal? The so-called MSM and hollywood stars and starlets all refer to whats-her-name's DEAD ON portrayal... here's a quote from SNL: "I believe global warming is God just hugging us closer" Huh? I mean when did Sarah Palin say anything even remotely bizarre as that? SNL and the so-called MSM's job is to portray her as a 'wacko' which she clearly is anything but a wacko...and now, Letterman piles it on calling her a slut, a slutty stewardess look-alike, and there is nothing off limits. If I were Todd her husband and this were 1809, there would be a duel. (I hope Todd at least rabbit punches Letterman at some cocktail party.)

Now Dave is saying it was 'just a joke' and makes further attacks -- how angry and upset the Palin family is over just one of many jokes. He turns the tables on Palin -- points his finger and now Dave is somehow the victim in this? R U Serious? Sorry Dave, you are not the victim and no, it isn't "just a joke". It is Letterman perpetuating a left-wing myth that conservatives are wacko promiscuous weirdos. Then, he crosses the line to take on her children. There is no excuse for that, but it is Dave's job to continue the big lie. When she calls him on it, he makes himself out to be the victim.

He says he wasn't harassing the 14 year old, the one actually at the stadium. Mr. Letterman, it doesn't matter if you didn't realize she was with her minor child -- it is unacceptable to attack a defenseless child. You have had a TV show much longer than she has been alive. How is it appropriate for you to attack a child under any circumstances? How about take on someone your own size? CBS should fire him over it.

Remember the outrage when Reagan joked about "outlawing Russia forever" and starting bombing in five minutes? There was no end to the media hype over that--there still isn't. But it was just a joke. The only truth to it was that Russia was our sworn and bitter enemy at that time. Kind of like how Sarah Palin and her family are enemies of all things Letterman.

Sorry Dave, your so-called jokes are intended to further the lie that Palin is unfit for public office. It is to further your personal political ends, even at the cost of making jokes about her children, which most of them don't even understand and certainly cannot defend themselves against. And that is why David Letterman should be fired. The Fire David Letterman movement has some real support -- see Cyntia Yockey:

CBS is still playing the “This will all blow over” card. No. It. Won’t.

Persistent, consistent effort on our part will persuade sponsors to drop Letterman’s show and CBS to fire David Letterman.

If we don’t take out this bully, we’ll be swarmed by the millions who will follow his example.

I enjoyed Letterman's humor when he was tossing watermelons off an eight story building. Now, he just crossed the line one time too many.

Update: CBS (where Letterman's show airs) isn't about to fire him, as long as they are publishing this drivel.

Update II: Suek in the comments:

Saul Alinsky...

"Rules for Radicals"

"Identify the enemy, personalize it, freeze it (as a target), destroy it."

"Ridicule is the unanswerable destroyer"

Disagreement is the New Terrorism

The Obama Administration sees no "axis of evil" and speaks no "war on terror." So who do we hear them label as terrorists? Answer: Thomas Lauria, an attorney who represented an Indiana teacher’s pension fund in the Chrysler bankruptcy litigation. Ms Underestimated transcribes an email exchange between Matthew Feldman, a lawyer on the President’s Auto Task Force, and Robert Manzo, a restructuring expert:

Robert Manzo, Chrysler restructuring expert: "I hope you think it’s worth giving this one more shot."

Matthew Feldman, attorney on the President’s Auto Task Force: "I’m now not talking to you. You went where you shouldn’t."

Manzo: "Sorry. I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing and I obviously did. I was trying to make sure that if we had to contribute to the solution you knew we had some room. Sorry I did not realize the mistake!!"

Feldman: "It’s over. The President doesn’t negotiate second rounds. We’ve given and lent billions of dollars so your team could manage this properly. . . And now you’re telling me to bend over to a terrorist like Lauria? That’s B.S."

Rand Simberg calls it "Defining terrorism down." True, but down to what? Apparently, legal arguments and free speech with which the Administration disagrees are the new terrorism.

(via The Corner)

QOTD

On the Library of Economics and Liberty site, economist Anthony de Jasay cautions against over-simplifying the explanation for the credit-crisis:

The technocratic view is that the dysfunction that was set off in August 2007 and has since grown to alarming proportions, was due to reckless deregulation of the financial system and more generally to the withdrawal of governments from their controlling and safeguarding role. Since the invisible hand has proved to be unsafe, let us once again put our trust in the strong hands of the state and let us, without procrastination and horse-trading, build a new regulatory framework that will preserve the strengths of free markets while ensuring their smooth working and protecting them from wild stress and strain.

It should not surprise us if future historians were to conclude that this reasoning was a typical case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc--the troubles came after deregulation, therefore they were caused by deregulation. In fact, the chain of causation was probably less pat and simple. An exceptionally low real interest rate spectrum due primarily to the gigantic East Asian excess saving has generated a housing price bubble in the United States, Britain, Spain and Ireland. It is very doubtful whether the Federal Reserve could have resisted this even if it had wanted to. At least partly if not wholly as a result of stimulation by public policies favouring home ownership by very low income groups, there was much overlending on mortgages, risky even if house prices had remained at their inflated level and loss-making if they turned down--as they duly did. Fannie May and Freddie Mac could not hold off the degradation of mortgage portfolios. The physical capital represented by the mortgaged housing stock was not damaged, but the securities that had big batches of both prime and subprime mortgages as their collateral (and that bankers allegedly did not even understand) were damaged by a loss of confidence that temporarily froze them into illiquidity. There were many would-be sellers but only a few "vultures" would buy, and they only at near-absurd prices. Securities whose mortgage collateral may have become 30 per cent non-performing and that percentage, in turn, would all end in foreclosure and permit, within a year or so, no more than 50 per cent of the mortgage debt to be recovered, would under these conditions have an intrinsic worth of roughly 85 per cent of their par value (a loss of 50 per cent on the 30 per cent of defaulting mortgages, i.e. a 15 per cent on all the mortgages). The "vultures" might buy some at 20 per cent of the nominal value which very few banks would willingly accept. However, in that case under the "mark to market" rule, they had no choice but to devalue their mortgage-backed securities to 20 per cent of the par value, declaring a truly frightening loss of 80 per cent. This was the trigger of the panic.

From then on, the rest follows fairly easily. Credit default insurance losses are a multiple of the mortgage-based losses, although they are matched by the gains of counterparties. In fact, all purely financial losses are matched by gains or avoided losses, the whole being a zero-sum game that impacts the distribution of wealth, but not its total, amount. However, at this point the effects on confidence enters the game. In particular the influence of modern, aggressive media on partly-informed opinion becomes decisive. "Things are really not too bad" is not a good headline but "things are catastrophic" is. August authorities, including the head of the IMF, get into the headlines and the evening news by announcing that much, much worse is to come. Such prophecies are self-fulfilling. Even the prudent customers who have no credit card debt will stop buying durable goods, and the financial mayhem infects the "real" economy. It is a perfectly open question whether more regulation could have prevented such an outcome. Quite possibly it might have aggravated it, and may yet make any recovery slow and awkward.

Be that as it may, the politicians and the technocrats will now pile regulation on regulation, making the economy more rigid and sluggish, because the groundswell of popular sentiment imperatively demands it.

Agreed.

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

How does the mainstream media profile the American-hating, Jew-bashing, violent radical newly re-elected President of Iran? By comparing him to George W. Bush, of course:


source: CBS News via The New Republic

As Wizbang says:

Ahmadinejad is an evil dictator who is killing his own citizens in the streets because they are expressing their outrage at how he rigged the election through massive voter fraud. This creep also has his goons beat women in public for showing their hair. He bans satallite television. He has young girls executed when it was they who were raped. Ahmandinejad has the soul of the devil, and CBS calls him Iran's George W. Bush. Disgraceful!

This is supposed to be a legitimate news organization but they've proven themselves to be nothing but a black hole in which truth, fairness, and decency are sucked in to never be seen or heard from again. No wonder mainstream media news outlets, especially CBS, are losing viewers, readers, and listeners when they are incapable of reporting anything but lies like this.

See also the LA Times.

(via Gateway Pundit, Patterico)

Neither The New York Times Nor The Red Cross Settle the Question

Last week, I replied to copithorne's claim that conservatives offer no public policy perspectives. I argued that copithorne closed his ears to conservatives by relying on false premises, then demonizing his opponents for starting from a different world-view.

A score of comments later, copithorne still insists he's right. This post replies to two specific points.

1. The effect of Bush's tax cuts on the economy: I never said I supported deficits or Bush's spending policies--he spent too much. I did say that tax cuts can stimulate the economy and increase tax receipts. Again, I note that the Bush tax cuts helped to reduce the Federal deficit about 65 percent between 2003 and 2007 (when the credit crisis started). I note he hasn't responded, except to deny suggesting that Bush intended "to enrich the wealthy." But he said Bush's policy "was to give tax cuts to the wealthy." I've showed he gave tax cuts to all. Contrary to copithorne's assertion that recent economic gains were confined to the wealthy, the poor have thrived--middle class stagnation is a fantasy of class-warfare partisans.
   
   The New York Times chart that copithorne cites--which blames Bush for much of the deficit--is seriously flawed, as Alex Tabarrok, Von at Obsidian Wings, Megan McArdle, Arnold Kling, Burton Folsom, EconomistMom, Gateway Pundit and Wolf Howling have detailed. As the Economist says:

   Bad as the deficit was under Mr Bush, it will quadruple this year, from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.845 trillion (from 3.2% of GDP to 13.1%), according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Mr Obama vows to slash it in half within four years, but that will still leave it bigger than the deficits for which he once lashed Mr Bush.

   See also Megan McArdle again, Gateway Pundit again and Donald Marron.
   
   If deficit reduction is copithorne's priority, Obama's projected annual budget deficits will exceed the largest deficit of any year during the previous Administration:
   
   
   source: March 21st Washington Post
   
   Since then, of course, spending plans have multiplied -- which will require higher taxes or more borrowing -- far out-stripping the relatively low amount spent on the Iraq war. On that subject, copithorne is silent--better, at least, than the reliably over-dramatic Andrew Sullivan.



2. The applicable law defining prohibited interrogation techniques: copithorne says that Bush's policy was to torture. Uh, no. As I've already explained, the fact that the Bush Administration carefully examined the law shows per force that it did not decide to torture--had it, such examinations would have been unnecessary.
   
   In comments, copithorne says that the fact that the Red Cross accuses the United States of torture establishes "a moral authority" that we have. Uh, no. As commenter Jess says, the Red Cross doesn't make such determinations. That organization's self-description is a "humanitarian protagonist" (only the British Labour party considers the Red Cross anti-Islamic). copithorne apparently favors adopting plaintiffs' view without regard to the other side's argument. Uh, no. Whether we've committed torture depends on the law: the words of the relevant treaty, statute, regulations and interpretations in the cases.
   
   The United States has ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (S. Treaty Doc. 100-20, entered into force for U.S. Nov. 20, 1994, albeit with a relevant reservation). The key provisions are the definition of torture in Article 1(1):

   For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

   Article 4 requires that state parties to the agreement criminalize torture. Finally, Article 16(1) requires that state parties "undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
   
   Most criminal law is state law. The United States implemented Article 4 for U.S. officials acting outside the United States in 18 U.S.C. Section 2340A. The statutory definition of torture is at 18 U.S.C. Section 2340. Under Federal regulations (8 C.F.R. Section 1208.18) and U.S. case law, torture requires the specific intent "to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Pierre v. Attorney General, 528 F.3d 180, 189 (3d Cir. 2008) (en banc).
   
   The Bush Administration legal analysis -- particularly the August 1, 2002, and May 30, 2005 memos -- fully examine the applicable international and domestic constraints and definitions to derive a set of interrogation methods that would not constitute torture. These were applied to unlawful combatants, which are neither POWs nor civilians.
   
   Even Bush administration detractors concede the memos are "a serious attempt to stay within the bounds of the law, while defining the law as liberally as possible. That may be wrong, but it doesn't seem to be criminal." The Administration carefully attempted to preserve American lives and national security while walking a fine line of avoiding criminal behavior. And they were bound by the requirement, echoed in the Senate reservation, that "U.S. obligations under international law are subordinate to, and cannot override, the Constitution."
   
   copithorne blithely derides the Bush memos:

   If I get my lawyer to write a note saying it is OK to steal your car, will it then be morally acceptable to steal your car?
   
   Is that how moral reasoning works in your tribe?

   His analogy is false. The question is what constitutes stealing (or in this case, torture). Under copithorne's quip, lawyers could transform bumping a fender while parallel parking into grand theft auto.
   
   As I said initially, copithorne "may disagree with the outcome . . . and dispute the reasoning" of the Bush memos. But that doesn't make his view settled law. There's little precedent and ample scope for debate. Indeed, copithorne's reasoning may represent only a minority of Americans. Yet copithorne's repeated and mocking reference to the conservative "tribe" show how unwilling he is even to credit the good faith of his opponent--which borders on Paul Krugman-ism.
   
   And much of the problem lies in blaming lawyers for political policy. As is happening in San Francisco. As I already pointed out to copithorne, that's the function of elections and popular sovereignty--the core of democracy. But to him, winning the election means not having to say your opponent is serious.

Conclusion: I'm always willing to debate the rational. But copithorne says I deny objective reality and promote moral relativism. Uh, no. It is copithorne who presumes his opponents have nothing to offer. Again, like Samuel Johnson, "I refute it thus."

The Health of Canada, Part VI

According to the June 11th Surrey Leader (B.C.), the new carbon tax will slice single-payer healthcare funding in British Columbia:

The Lower Mainland's health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.'s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints.

Critics say the payments mean the government's strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding.

"You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency," NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.

"That just doesn't make sense."

The Fraser Health Authority will pay $616,000 in carbon tax this year, rising to $821,000 next year, officials there said.

And by 2010 Fraser will also be paying $1.3 million a year to the province's Pacific Carbon Trust to offset its projected 52,600 tonnes of carbon emissions released. . .

Dix warned that some of the potential cuts -- such as closing the ER at Mission Memorial Hospital -- would actually increase carbon emissions by sending patients further afield.

"Obviously when you shut down regional centres it makes people travel farther to get to their health care facility," he said.

See also the waiting time for surgery to correct incontinence (Google translation). And this Wall Street Journal op-ed.

(via Don Surber)

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

Michael Wolff in the July 2009 Vanity Fair:

The balance of power has surely shifted--although you won’t get anyone in the White House to say that. Except every day you can read it in press secretary Gibbs’s cockiness and condescension.

You have to understand the primitiveness of the daily briefing--it’s a ritualistic sumo of dominance and submission. At least since the Bush-father administration (after the brilliance of the Reagan press operation), it’s mostly been the press dominating whoever the press secretary is, and the press secretary trying to avoid being broken as he or she does the job of trying to avoid giving out information. Among press secretaries in recent memory, there’s been the drowning George Stephanopoulos, the angry Ari Fleischer, and the hapless and tongue-tied Scott McClellan. (Exceptions include Tony Snow, the Fox News anchor, who continued to act like a television host, and Mike McCurry and Joe Lockhart, whose approach was, at nearly any cost, to please the press.)

Gibbs has reversed this dynamic. It’s not just that he successfully holds the pressroom at bay. It’s that he clearly doesn’t take the press very seriously. Gibbs is perfectly affable and even, in his way, courtly. And yet he seems to be not quite listening. Nothing touches him. This is no doubt partly because everybody understands he’s in like Flynn. Unlike with most press secretaries, where the press has the leverage of often knowing more than the press secretary, who is usually a relatively weak West Wing link, Gibbs really knows all, apparently--he’s as present as anyone in the creation of Obama policy. There is too the Obama 30-point advantage--he’s got America eating out of his hand. Gibbs has, at least so far, an easy product to sell. And then there’s the personal insecurity on the part of members of the incredible shrinking press--their days are numbered and they know it.

All of which might have something to do in the dominance-and-submission equation with why, at the president’s 100-day press conference, there were no questions about the bailouts or Afghanistan, perhaps the two most intractable issues facing the administration. When the other guy is strong and you are weak, you try to behave yourself.

And yet, a funny thing: Gibbs, who surely knows something about the dwindling life of the establishment media, who as Obama’s campaign spokesperson was part of the most sophisticated new-media outreach program in politics, who is, with his own personal access and his boss’s overwhelming popularity, beholden to nobody, nevertheless appears to be playing the press game as straight and as conventionally and, in a sense, as humbly as it’s ever been played. "His M.O.," says David Corn, a longtime Washington reporter who is a regular at the daily briefing, is "to talk to the dinosaurs."

The established news organizations may have almost no pulse left in them, but you wouldn’t get an inkling of such a reversal in fortunes from the White House’s ritual obeisance. The hierarchy evidently remains as fixed as it’s ever been. The "change" guys have altered nothing. It might as well be, say, 1995, with the Times, the Post, the networks, CNN, the newsweeklies, and even 88-year-old Helen Thomas (I say 1995 because that was before the advent of Fox News, which, unlike in the Bush administration, where it was the first point of contact and virtual mouthpiece, hardly exists in the Obama media point of view) all given a regal pride of place.

In fact, it almost seems as though the Obama people have abandoned that grail of all White Houses, to bypass the mainstream media and go directly to the people, to get the message out, pure and unfiltered--which, with their millions of e-mail addresses and Twitter followers, never seemed so possible as now.

Instead, they’re wooing The New York Times as assiduously as Pierre Salinger did on behalf of John Kennedy in 1962. And, perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times woos back--rewarding the president with a lavishness of coverage not seen since, well, J.F.K. in 1962. It’s an establishment lovefest.

It’s some perfect re-creation of a relationship between president and news media that has not been seen since the White House pressroom was a clubby place with reporters invited into the press secretary’s office for whiskey and cigars. It’s cozy. Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, who would have been, in previous administrations, the highest and most exclusive White House sources, have become almost casual quotes for the Times.

It is, curiously, a return to a time when the press was so much more dependent on the goodwill, and susceptible to the care and feeding, of the president. Indeed, The New York Times, and the rest of the established press, needs Barack Obama a lot more than he needs them. . .

They have been handed a most remarkable historical moment--in which they get to remake the media in their own image. They have the power and they are the subject. These people in this White House are in greater control of the media than any administration before them.

The only thing is, they mustn’t let on that they know it.

(via Elizabeth Scalia)

Connected

When President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union speech labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "axis of evil," he was derided by lefties, European leaders, academics and other wackos. Never mind North Korea's aggressive threat of war, perplexing the Obama Administration, the United Nations--and jailing journalists. Or that Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges still spin. For progressives, Americans, not despots, endanger the planet.

Still, this surprised me: Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez wished Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a hearty good luck and, with Ahmadinejad apparently wining re-election as Iran's President (possibly through fraud), Chavez sent his congratulations. Buddies in evil at least. Not that progressives pay attention. Besides, the President's busy bullying Israel.

(via The Corner)

Whistling Past the Graveyard

The New York Times chortles that 95 percent of blogs are abandoned. That still leaves 7-10 million posting after the Times files for bankruptcy sometime next year.

(via Ann Althouse)

QOTD

From Thomas Hone & Trent Hone, Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919-39 (2006), at 60:

"One of the thrills of a lifetime," according to [Navy Commander H.H.] Frost, "was to hold my breath when the [destroyer] Peary passed the [destroyer tender] Black Hawk in the Suez Canal. The latter was making about twelve knots and the Peary ran past us at twenty. We could have thrown a biscuit across. It was a superb maneuver--one of those beau gestes that every real destroyer captain loves to make. But once is enough!"

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

How does the MSN describe a former adviser to the 1988 Dukakis Presidential campaign who became a cabinet official under President Clinton, and now is the top economic adviser to President Obama?

To the New York Times, Lawrence Summers is "a right-of-center economist."

(via David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy)

Chart of the Day

When it comes to trains, President Obama says Europe is the model. Ok, but how much does Europe depend on rail, as opposed to other modes of transport? Using 2003 data, the U.K.'s Commission for Integrated Transport's Are We There Yet? A Comparison of Transport in Europe (2007) answers:


source: CfIT study, Figure 3

Sounds like passenger cars are more convenient--even "over there." And mass-transportation emissions are not as green as advocates claim. And they're rarely profitable absent massive subsidies.

(via FuturePundit)

QOTD

Ralph Peters in the Spring 2009 Journal of International and Security Affairs:

The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to "pay any price and bear any burden" to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties--hostile, civilian and our own--continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves.

(via Maggie's Farm)

Reasons to Love New Zealand, Part V: Free Market Agriculture

Free market agriculture in New Zealand:

...ever since a liberal but free-market government swept to power in 1984 and essentially canceled handouts to farmers -- something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible -- agriculture here has never been the same.

The farming community was devastated -- but not for long. Today, agriculture remains the lifeblood of New Zealand's economy. There are still more sheep and cows here than people, their meat, milk and wool providing the country with its biggest source of export earnings. Most farms are still owned by families, but their incomes have recovered and output has soared. ''Farming in New Zealand is now a cold, hard business,'' said Mr. Lumsden, who at the time of the farming revolution was president of Federated Farmers in the Waikato region, the heart of New Zealand's dairy country. ''I think we have benefited hugely.''

New Zealand's farmers are not the only ones convinced that eliminating subsidies, or at least sharply cutting them, is a good idea. As negotiators struggle to revive the failing global trade talks and Congress moves ahead on a new farm bill in the United States, New Zealand and Australia -- which also cut subsidies but not as drastically -- are being extolled by economists and advocates for poor countries as models for Americans and Europeans to follow.

So can New Zealand compete with the rest of the (subsidized) world? You bet!

...unlike the United States, where most farm output is consumed domestically, almost all of New Zealand's milk, meat and wool is sold abroad. ''There's a lot of differences between New Zealand and the United States,'' Tom Buis, president of the National Farmers Union in Washington, said in a telephone interview. ''They are almost completely export oriented, and that's quite the reverse of the U.S.''...the response in New Zealand's dairy industry to the end of subsidies is broadly instructive. Output has quintupled since the end of subsidies, positioning New Zealand to take advantage of a global boom in demand for dairy products, driven from China and India.

So how did New Zealand wake up to this gift of capitalism?

After growing rich in the early 20th century off the byproducts of its pasture, New Zealand imposed subsidies not so much to protect farming but as part of a plan to insulate its domestic manufacturers from global competition. It offset the costs to its farmers from higher industrial tariffs by giving them subsidies. But farming is not a small part of the economy as it is in the United States; it is the nation's largest, most important sector.

''It was wacko,'' said John Yeabsley, a former trade official who is now an economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research in Wellington. ''Who's going to pay for the subsidies?''

Farmers eventually realized that it was them. They responded to their higher tax burden by maximizing their subsidies. ''The whole thing,'' Mr. Wooding said, ''was a game to try to get as much government money as possible.''

Wow, they just figured it out for themselves. Instead of trying to get a bigger piece of the pie, they decided to grow the pie.

Agriculture subsidies distort food prices, make farmers grow unwanted crops, encourage misuse of land and invite crony capitalism. Take a look at what is happening in India where farmers eschew government subsidies and have a far better farming experience.

Since the system works so well in India and New Zealand, how could we implement it here? Well, there are plenty of lessons learned from the New Zealand experience. This knowledge would help us get there, but there is a bigger problem. The square states won't let us give up subsidies. As Carl puts it: "Half of the states are net recipients of farm subsidies, meaning they're "over-represented" in the Senate. In Washington, the mid-West is know as "the square states" or "the farm team," a political bloc seeking subsidies that's tough to defeat."

As ever, once initiated, it is damned difficult to get rid of government programs, no matter how broken they are, and despite broken promises to the contrary. Once again, less government is better government, and another reason to Love New Zealand: Free Market Agriculture.

Check out the other top reasons to love New Zealand.

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

Reese Schonfeld, co-founder of CNN, writing at the Puffington Host:

Nine years ago, when FoxNews sprinted past CNN to become America's number one news network, I attributed its ratings gains to the election of George Bush and the triumph of Fox-watching conservatives. I figured conservatives would be savoring their victory while liberals were averting their eyes in disgust. For the next eight years, I measured political sentiment in the United States by comparing the size of the FoxNews audience with the combined size of the CNN/MSNBC audience. In this space, I even predicted, with reasonable accuracy, the percent by which Barack Obama won the election based on the split in the news audience.

Now, seven months after Barack Obama's victory, CNN's ratings have gone down the drain. From May of last year to May of this year, CNN lost 22% of its total primetime audience. MSNBC was down 2%, while FoxNews was up 24%. In the key advertising demographic (25-54), Fox was up 31%, CNN was down 37% and MSNBC was down 26%. In hard numbers, Fox had 109,000 more viewers than last year while CNN lost 113,000. CNN averaged fewer than 200,000 25-54 viewers in primetime. Even MSNBC averaged more viewers than that.

Total day was nearly as bad, with Fox up 24% and CNN down 7%. MSNBC was down 2% in total viewing. Fox is beating CNN almost two-to-one in most categories.

There's no need to throw any more numbers at you--Fox is gaining, CNN is wilting. Why is this happening when the country still seems about 58-42 in favor of Obama? My best guess is the passion of those who detest Democrats, liberals, and in particular, Barack Obama. . .

But, then again, maybe all of the above are wrong. Maybe it's simply the need for an enemy, the desire to detest is greater than the power to tolerate; maybe it's the need to blame somebody else for the bad things that are happening in our lives that drives viewers to Fox. Perhaps those viewers are the next generation of the rich socialites in the old New Yorker cartoon, who dressed up to go to the newsreel theatre and hiss FDR. Only now they can do it at home, watching FoxNews.

Got that? When ratings are down, blame President Bush. When ratings drop even more, blame ex-President Bush. Or Christians. Blame everything except the media's slanted suck-ups to the Obamessiah--journalists think that's their job.

(via Don Surber)

Deconstructing America's Rhetorician-in-Chief

The Daily Beast examined Barack Obama's most famous speeches, and fashions a formula for "turning even the most divisive debates into an inspiring call for unity."

(via Betsy's Page)

One Economic Narrative

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins Jr. tries to trace the cause of the credit crunch in the June-July Hoover Institution Policy Review:

[I]t isn’t true that Wall Street made these mortgage securities just to dump them on them the proverbial greater fool, or that the disaster was wrought by Wall Street firms irresponsibly selling investment products they knew or should have known were destined to blow up. On the contrary, Merrill Lynch retained a great portion of the subprime mortgage securities for its own portfolio (it ended up selling some to a hedge fund for 22 cents on the dollar). Citigroup retained vast holdings in its so-called structured investment vehicles. Holdings of these securities, in funds in which their own employees personally participated, brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. AIG, once one of the world’s most admired corporations, made perhaps the biggest bet of all, writing insurance contracts against the potential default of these products.

So Wall Street can hardly be accused of failing to eat its own dog food. It did not peddle to others an investment product that it was unwilling to consume in vast quantities itself.

Nor is it true that Wall Street executives and CEOs had insufficient "skin in the game," so that "perverse" compensation incentives created the mess. That story also does not pan out. Individuals, it’s true, were paid sizable bonuses in the years in which the securities were created and sold. But most also had considerable wealth in the form of stock and stock options in their firms, which bet their own capital on these securities. Many also appear to have invested directly in funds to hold the subprime securities.

They had skin in the game. Personal losses to top executives in banks that failed or whose share prices collapsed were in the millions, hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions of dollars. . .

It isn’t true, either, that Wall Street manufactured these securities as a purblind bet that home prices only go up. The securitizations had been explicitly designed with the prospect of large numbers of defaults in mind — hence the engineering of subordinate tranches designed to protect the senior tranches from those defaults that occurred. . .

Nor is it plausible that all concerned were simply mesmerized by, or cynically exploitative of, the willingness of rating agencies to stamp Triple-A on these securities. Wall Street firms knew what the underlying dog food consisted of, regardless of what rating was stamped on it. As noted, they willingly bet their firm’s money on it, and their own personal money on it, in addition to selling it to outsiders. . .

Up has gone a cry in the aftermath for some kind of "systemic regulator" to prevent a reoccurrence and spare the political class from having to vote for bailouts in the future -- though, in an evasion of reality, this über-regulator is supposed to spot bubbles and unwise risk-taking before they blow up, sounding a whistle just when investors are at the most enthusiastic lest investors inflict more losses on themselves than Congress will decide in retrospect should have been permitted.

In reality, we already have a systemic regulator -- the Federal Reserve, whose traditional mission, in the colloquial description, is to "take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting started." The Fed has been imperfect in this task in the past and will be so in the future.

What Congress doesn’t want to admit is that it wants not a systemic regulator, but a systemic savior — an institution that can step forward and stop panic in its tracks. But we have one of those too — the Fed again. For all the arguments heard on Capitol Hill last fall that only a $700 billion appropriation stood between us and financial Armageddon, that $700 billion sum has proved a pittance compared to the resources the Fed, under Ben Bernanke, has deployed out of its hip pocket. The Fed has bought unwanted assets and issued guarantees to the tune of more than $1 trillion. It has created untold billions in excess bank liquidity through monetary policy. If we’re honest, the Fed’s ability to print money stands behind the FDIC, which insures the nation’s bank deposits. It stands behind Fannie and Freddie, which are increasingly in the business of losing money on purpose to help the housing market. Even the U.S. Treasury has been edging sideways toward relying on the Federal Reserve to finance the exploding national debt.

We have a systemic savior -- the Federal Reserve. And all that remains to be seen is how much its efforts this time will ultimately cost in the erosion of the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.

I'm not sure I concur with all of Jenkins's analysis, but read the whole thing. And see Arnold Kling.

(via The Corner)

QOTD

From the June 22nd National Review (subscription only):

There are few sounds more pleasing to the conservative ear than the clang of colliding liberal pieties. Consider the recent case of Michaëlle Jean, governor-general of Canada, which is to say, viceroy under Queen Elizabeth of England, Canada’s head of state. Jean incarnates an unusual quantity of politically correct essences, being black, female, and an immigrant (from Haiti to Canada when aged eleven). On an official tour of a far northern region inhabited mainly by Eskimos, she participated enthusiastically in a traditional folk ceremony associated with the main source of local income. Unfortunately that source is seal hunting, and the ceremony involved eating a sliver of raw meat from the heart of a young seal Jean had just helped to butcher. We wish we could tell you that she had personally clubbed the seal to death before gutting it, preferably in front of a platoon of keening Greenpeace activists; but alas, this is not recorded. We’ll take what we can get, though, and wait with interest to see how Sarah Palin will react to having been upstaged like this.

Mega Moment

According to the Texas-based Global Language Monitor, the English language just welcomed its millionth word.

(via Amy Ridenour)

Stalled on the Shape of the Bargaining Table

Assistant Village Idiot has been discussing discussing. No, that's not a typo. On June 6th, AVI asked "what constitutes a proper persuasive post on a blog?"--or, more generally, in debate. On June 1st, he wondered "how conservatives should seek to persuade progressives," quoting neo-neocon and other authors.

Good questions. My 2005 answer was that the most persuasive arguments are sourced, sound and supported. Surely everyone from progressive to paleo-con agrees.

Er. . .perhaps not. It's difficult to debate those who presume their opponents are dumb--another academic study "proving" conservatives are stupid was published last month. And it's impossible to argue with those whose ideological bias so distorts the facts that they refuse to acknowledge accurate sources.

Which brings me to the debate sparked by AVI's June 1st post. In multiple disparate and lengthy comments--none of which had hyperlinks--"copithorne" took the opposite view. He asserted that "contemporary conservatism has ceased to be a philosophy of public policy and has become entirely about a sense of tribal victimization." "copithorne" continued:

For me the main currency of a constructive political conversation is: government policy is X. Government policy should be Y. . .

Once again, I invited you to present policy arguments. And it just doesn't seem to be a subject that you or your friends here can marshal a response to. So, that will be a yawning gap between our understanding of what constitutes politics and what constitutes a meaningful conversation about politics.

It doesn't have to complex arguments.

The policy of the government was to torture people. We should not torture.

The policy of the government was to start wars. We should not start wars.

The policy of the government was to give tax cuts to the wealthy. We should not give tax cuts to the wealthy.

I could and did expand on any of those if they were unclear. But I was always interested in policies and outcomes.

I demonstrated in comments on AVI that copithorne made at least two errors:

1) The policy of the previous Administration was not to torture. Rather, they had a half-dozen lawyers carefully analyze the relevant definitions and reach logic-supported conclusions as to the scope of the prohibition. You may disagree with the outcome. You may dispute the reasoning. But you can't miss-characterize the facts, then accuse your opponents of wallowing in tribal victimization.

2) The policy of the previous Administration was to cut taxes for all income levels. And they did--although the share of taxes paid by the rich went up, especially when comparing the top and bottom income deciles. So don't over-simplify the other side to conform to your pre-conceived image of conservatives.

copithorne's response:

Yeah, Carl, I go by the definition of torture used by the Red Cross, the FBI, General Petraeus and the one used throughout American history. I understand your tribe has your own private definition that works for you. From the outside that definition appears to be a rationalization.

I don't understand how your remarks qualify my own policy views that it was a mistake to cut taxes for the wealthy which was a prime factor in moving the country from a surplus of 250 billion to a deficit of 1.3 trillion.

copithorne is debating blindfolded:

1) Please cite a legally-applicable definition "used throughout American history" that was violated. If the previous Administration's policy was pro-torture, why did Bush direct his lawyers repeatedly and agonizingly to research the law? If the intent was torture, the analysis would have been unnecessary. Contrary to your unsupported assumption, those memos tried to interpret the scope of the relevant legal limits. Please provide specifics of where such memos departed from settled law. Even lawyers who opposed waterboarding conceded it was lawful.

2) Please cite a source for asserting cutting taxes for the wealthy was "a prime factor" in moving from a $250 B surplus to a $1.3 T deficit. The Federal budget balance was dropping as Bush took office--a product of the recession Clinton bequeathed--and two years before his tax cuts were fully effective. Historically, tax cuts stimulate the economy and increase tax receipts, which is why even liberal Presidents have cut taxes. The Bush tax cuts were no different, and dramatically upped revenues and reduced the Federal budget deficit about 65 percent between fiscal years 2003 and 2007. Further, between 2003 and 2006, income tax receipts were up from both individuals ($250 billion) and corporations ($230 billion). The Federal budget deficit started increasing again in 2008. But that was the result of the current recession and credit crunch--tax rates remained essentially the same after FY07. And, of course, we're spending ever faster, so the deficit's now rising more swiftly--though most lefties still blame Bush. They ignore the fact that tax cuts were a more effective stimulus than spending hikes. By the way, Bush cut taxes for everyone--but the wealthy actually paid proportionately more. Between 2003-06, the share of income taxes paid by the top 5 percent of earners rose, while the share paid by taxpayers below the top 25 percent of earners fell (see Table 6). But copithorne still calls it a tax cut for the wealthy.

I doubt copithorne can be persuaded. But that's not the point. The question is: can anyone? Or has debate died?

In comments on a previous post, AVI suggested that:

[L]iberalism has an enormous social component, the idea behind the study could be at least partly true. It takes skill and intelligence to read and adjust to social cues. People who have lots of brain material might indeed devote considerable resources to fitting in, not only to their immediate surroundings, but what they understand to be the culture as a whole and projected trends.

Isn't that how liberalism always sells itself, after all? This is where history is going. This is where coolness is going. This is where fashion and evolution and dominance and status are all going. Get on board, get on board.

New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik chronicled a related insight about French leftists in his book Paris to the Moon (pages 96-97):

[I]t's apparent (to us Americans) . . . that the theories they employ change, flexibly, and of necessity, from moment to moment in conversation, that the notion of limiting conversation to a rigid rule of theoretical consistency is an absurd denial of what conversation is.

Well replace fact (and factual for theory) in that last sentence and you have the common French view of fact checking. People don't speak in straight facts: the facts change, flexibly and with varying emphasis, as the conversation changes, and the notion of limiting conversation to a rigid rule of pure factual consistency is an absurd denial of what conversation is. Not, of course, that the French intellectual doesn't use and respect facts, up to a useful point. . . Conversation is an organic, improvised web of fact and theory, and to pick out one bit of it for microscopic overexamination is typically American overearnest comedy.

Interviewed by Robert Birnbaum, Gopnik's analysis of the French applies equally to copithorne:

It's a society that values philosophers over lawyers. I like that about it very much. It also means that people can live in absolute isolation from reality. It's very hard to produce counter-evidence for an argument in France. You just make up another argument. I give the example in the book of fact-checking. No one I ever spoke to in Paris could understand what the point was of having a fact checker call to check the facts. The lovely thing about it is the tendency to always look for a way around it all.

Conclusion: Debate demands supported and sourced syllogism. copithorne provides neither source nor support. Absent that, even sound logic can yield wrong results.

copithorne says debate has become impossible because "Democrats will lead. Republicans will complain." Maybe they're complaining about his failure to fact-check. And didn't the Dems spend the last 8 years saying "no"?

The left denies the existence of certainty. It's all relative; objectivity is a myth; science slipped to "the publication of untested (and often untestable) hypotheses." No wonder copithorne both insists he didn't "ma[ke] many comments at all speculating about motivations" yet looks into Bush's soul to discover the intent to torture and enrich the wealthy uniquely. Because that's his opening assumption. Put differently, copithorne's argument would prove that if you think Bush is evil, then Bush is evil. The valid and sound syllogism would conclude only that there exists some people who think Bush is evil--or who think Republicans can't debate.

If debate is dead, the murderer was post-modernism. Yet the table's still there and still square; as Samuel Johnson said in an analogous context, "I refute it thus."

(via Don Surber, Maggie's Farm)

Charts of the Day

From CTIA -- The Wireless Association's May 12th FCC filing of its study The United States and World Wireless Markets (May 2009):


source: CTIA study at 3


source: CTIA study at 4


Telling evidence of an elementary proposition: a lower price stimulates demand. Pages 5-17 of the study suggest why U.S. wireless airtime prices are so low.

Obamessiah Suck-Up of the Day

Newsweek editor at large Evan Thomas appearing on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews last Friday, discussing--in advance--President Obama's D-Day speech:

EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he -- he has a very different job from -- Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something -- I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above -- above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s-

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

THOMAS: He's going to bring all different sides together. It's a very different-

As Powerline's John Hinderaker says:

Reporters are often compared to teen-age girls with crushes on Obama, but, as the father of three present, former or about-to-be teen-age girls, I object to the analogy. I personally have never seen a teen-age girl make a fool of herself over a boy the way many--most--mainstream reporters have over Barack Obama.

Compare Thomas's view of the Presidency two years ago: "Well, our job is to bash the president. . ." See also the French restaurant owner who "saw God."

Which brings me to Rob Long's parody from the June 22nd National Review on dead tree (subscription-only):


source: The Corner

(via Newsbusters, Gateway Pundit, Confederate Yankee)

The Health of Canada, Part V

Sally Pipes's op-ed in June 4th Washington Examiner tracks a Canadian in pain:

The headaches persist for a week, and now they're accompanied by occasional bouts of dizziness. Plus, you're having difficulty concentrating, which is affecting your work. Something's got to be wrong.

When you finally go to the doctor and describe your symptoms, he orders an MRI to make sure your headaches aren’t a sign of something serious, like a tumor.

Of course, you won't learn the answer for quite awhile. Your doctor informs you that there's a ten-week wait for an MRI. Ten weeks of chronic headaches will be bad enough, you think, but not knowing what's wrong will be even worse because of the worry.

The doc attempts to lighten the mood by pointing out that you could have gone for an MRI in less than a week if you were a dog. Somehow that's not comforting.

Your doctor goes on to tell you that you'll have to wait another 19 weeks for a referral to a neurological specialist if the MRI reveals that something is wrong. "It's probably nothing," your doctor says, "so just relax and try to put it out of your mind."

This proves impossible. The wait is so nerve-wracking -- and the headaches so bothersome -- that you do a little online research to see what might be ailing you. You visit a few expert websites and find out that the average survival rate for all forms of cancer is three to four percentage points higher in the United States than it is in Canada, thanks in part to Canada's long waiting lists.

With these statistics in mind, you can't help but consider the worst-case scenario -- a brain tumor. You remember when your neighbor had a benign tumor and had to go in for surgery. What if you end up having a malignant one?

You begin to panic. A simple MRI takes 10 weeks, and you have to wait 19 weeks for an appointment with a specialist. All told, you'd likely wait about 32 weeks from the time of your appointment with your general practitioner for neurosurgery treatment!

"What good is a single-payer healthcare system," you ask yourself, "if I have to wait eight months for brain surgery? If pets wait less than two days for an MRI and less than a week for an appointment with a specialist, perhaps I'd be better off as a dog!"

You prepare to slog through the longest 10 weeks of your life, until your turn with the MRI machine comes.

After one month, you can't wait any longer. You decide to dip into your savings to pay for a private MRI. To your dismay, every healthcare facility you call turns you away (except those in Quebec because of a 2005 Canadian Supreme Court decision), claiming that it's against the law to sidestep the public health system to purchase certain procedures privately, like MRIs.

No wonder you constantly hear of not just rich but middle-income Canadians and high-profile politicians heading south to the States to skip the line, get tests like these done privately, and pay out of pocket.

Well, now it's your turn. You head across the border to a private clinic in the United States. The money you had socked away for a family vacation is now destined for an MRI test and a motel in Cleveland.

Obamessiah Suck-Up of the Day

Two Fridays ago, New York Times White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg appeared on the John Harwood/Norah O'Donnell-hosted "New York Times Special Edition on MSNBC" show. About 20 minutes in, the talk turned to Republican opponents of the Sonia Sotomayor nomination (emphasis added):

Host Norah O'Donnell: "Sheryl, what about that? I mean it's no surprise that Rush Limbaugh is a huge critic of this president. But using words first, like she's a racist or a reverse racist, and now today essentially comparing her nomination to that of comparing, to nominating, David Duke to the Supreme Court. This extreme view, and sometimes, you know, can be helpful to the opposition. But when Rush Limbaugh is now someone that no one in the Republican Party will publicly denounce, how difficult does it make it for the Republicans?"

White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg: "Well I think it does make it hard. But I also think it's important to note that the people who actually will vote on her nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee, have so far distanced themselves. We saw Orrin Hatch saying the other day, I disagree, I don't think she's a racist, he was disagreeing with Newt Gingrich, who called her a reverse racist. And also I think that it's important to note that this comes in the broader context of race relations in this country, with an African-American president trying to bring people together, now we're seeing those old ugly culture and race wars bubble up, and it'll be interesting to see if President Obama himself can kind of tamp that down."

Got that? Those complaining about racial-motivated Supreme Court appointments are not just racists, they're stopping the One's teaching the world to sing Om mani padme hum, which otherwise is uniting all in perfect progressive harmony.

Next up--levitating the Pentagon.

(via TimesWatch)

Obama's Top 10 Apologies (So far)

Mark Tapscott, in the Washington Examiner on June 5th opining on Obama's Apology Tour with his Top Ten Apologies (So Far)

10. Apology for Guantanamo in Washington: "There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. . . Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies."

9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: "So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes."

8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: "Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."

... and so on, counting down to the top 3:

3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: "While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. . . . So I’m here to launch a new chapter of engagement that will be sustained throughout my administration. The United States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made."

2. Apology to the Muslim World: "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect."

1. Apology to France and Europe: "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

More: Over at Pesky Emotional Republican the apology theme goes on.

Still More: At the American Thinker, they believe he hasn't apologized enough.

Words vs. Facts, Part II

President Barack Obama speaking at Cairo University June 4th:

The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace.

The first sentence of the Koran verse to which Obama was referring (Sura 5:32):

For this reason did We prescribe to the children of Israel that whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men; and whoever keeps it alive, it is as though he kept alive all men;

The next sentence of Sura 5:32:

and certainly Our messengers came to them with clear arguments, but even after that many of them certainly act extravagantly in the land.

The next verse (Sura 5:33):

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement

Eighteen verses ahead, Sura 5:51:

O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.

Sura 8:38:

Say to those who disbelieve, if they desist, that which is past shall be forgiven to them; and if they return, then what happened to the ancients has already passed.

Sura 9:5:

So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Sura 2:193:

And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.

Oh, by the way, Sura 4:34:

Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.

Merciful--to Muslims--and Great--to Muslims, the only "innocents".

See also Hodjas Blog, BeldarBlog and Wolf Howling:

What Obama did was a a trick out of Psychology 101. It is a technique that he uses often. He articulates the complaints of his audience without judgment. This is effective because it leaves the audience with the belief that Obama understands their complaint and empathizes with it. But the downside of that technique is that, if it is not followed by some clearly articulated honesty, it simply reinforces in the audience that their complaints are valid. It is a superb technique for psychologists, mediators, and politicians campaigning for office. It is a dangerous tool indeed for a person charged with the responsibilities of leadership.